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The Guantánamo Memoirs of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Part 3, Family)

The Slate
by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
May 2, 2013

Since the torture has stopped, Slahi has learned to play chess and tend to his garden. Today his interrogators are the closest thing he has to a family.

The violent interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi dragged on
through the fall of 2003. He remained in complete isolation in
Guantánamo’s Camp Echo. When representatives of the International
Committee of the Red Cross visited the base in October, Guantánamo
commander Gen. Geoffrey Miller told them Slahi was “off limits” “due to
military necessity,” but insisted that Camp Echo was not being used for
violent interrogations—as the ICRC delegation suspected—but as a
facility where detainees could have private conversations with their
attorneys. Slahi writes that he remained in “the secret place” until
August 2004.

“Show him no mercy. Increase the pressure. Drive the hell out of him crazy,” said [ ? ? ? ? ?].
And that was exactly what the guards did. Banging on my cell to keep me
awake and scared. Taking me out of my cell violently at least twice a
day for cell search. Taking me outside sometimes in the middle of the
night to make me do P.T. that I couldn’t do due to my health situation.
Putting me facing the wall several times a day and threatening me
directly and indirectly.

“You know who you are?” said [ ? ? ? ? ?].

“Uh.”

“You are a terrorist,” he continued.

“Yes, sir!”

“If we kill you once, it wouldn’t do. We must kill you 3,000 times. But instead, we feed you!”

“Yes, sir.”

In a matter of weeks I developed gray hair on the lower half of the
sides of my head. In my culture, people refer to this phenomenon as the
extreme result of depression.

Then, slowly but surely, guards were advised at the same time to 1)
give me the opportunity to brush my teeth, 2) give me more warm meals,
3) give me more showers. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
was the one who took the first steps, but I am sure there had been a
meeting about it. Everybody in the team realized that I was about to
lose my mind due to my psychological and physical situation. I’d been so
long in segregation.

“I brought you this present,” he said, while handing me a pillow.
Yes, a pillow. I received the present with a fake overwhelming
happiness—not because I was dying to get a pillow, but because I took
the pillow as a sign of the end of the physical torture. We have a joke
back home about a man who stood bare naked on the street, and when
asked, “How can I help you?” he replied, “Give me shoes.” And that is
exactly what happened to me. All I needed was a pillow!!!

I had nothing in my cell. Most of the time I recited the Quran. The
rest of the time I was speaking to myself and thinking about my life and
the worst-case scenarios that could happen to me. I had been counting
the holes of the cage I was in: There are about 4,100 holes. When they
gave me a pillow as a first reward, I kept reading the tag over and
over.

“Get up! Get your hands through the bin hole!” said the
unfriendly-sounding guard [after a weekend without interrogation]. After
they shackled me, they took me outside the building to where the [ ? ? ? ? ?]
were waiting me. It was the first time for me to see the daylight. Many
people take daylight for granted, but if you are forbidden to see it,
you will appreciate it. The brightness made my eyes squint until they
adjusted. The sun hit me mercifully with its warmth. I was terrified and
shaking.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked one of the guards later on.

“I am not used to this place.”

“We brought you outside so you can see the sun. We will have more rewards like this.”

*

No matter how bad your interrogators are, a family-like relationship
develops. This family relationship is just a family relationship, no
more, no less, with all the advantages and disadvantages.

The family comprises the guards and your interrogators. Yes, you
didn’t choose your family, nor did you grow up with it, but it is a
family with all the qualities.

“I am going to leave soon,” [ ? ? ? ? ?] said a couple days before he left.

“Oh, really, why?”

“It’s about time. But the other [ ? ? ? ? ?] is gonna stay with you.” That was not exactly comforting. I was startled, and couldn’t really think of an argument to convince [ ? ? ? ? ?]
to stay. But it would have been a futile argument because the transfer
of military intelligence agents is not a subject of discussion.

[ ? ? ? ? ?] left and showed up a couple of days later with a laptop and two movies.

“You can decide which one you’d like to watch.” I picked the movie Black Hawk Down; I don’t remember the other choice. The movie was both bloody and sad. I paid more attention to the emotions of [ ? ? ? ? ?] and the guards than to the movie itself. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
was rather calm. He paused the movie every once in a while to explain
to me the historical background of certain scenes. The guards almost
went crazy emotionally because they saw many Americans getting shot to
death. But they missed the fact that the number of U.S. casualties was
negligible compared to the Somalis who were attacked in their own homes.
I was just wondering how narrow-minded human beings can be. When people
look at one thing from one perspective, they certainly fail to get the
whole picture, and that is the main reason for the majority of
misunderstandings that sometimes lead to bloody confrontations.

After we finished watching the movie, [ ? ? ? ? ?] packed his computer and was ready to leave.

“Eh, by the way, you didn’t tell me when you’re going to leave!”

“I am done, you’ll not see me anymore!” I froze as if my feet were
stuck on the floor. He didn’t tell me he was going to leave that soon. I
thought maybe one month, three weeks, or something like that, but
today? In my world, that was impossible. It was as if death was
devouring some friend of yours and you just were helplessly watching him
fading away.

“Oh, really, that soon. I am surprised! You didn’t tell me. Goodbye. I wish everything good for you.”

“I have to follow my orders and I leave you in good hands.” And off [ ? ? ? ? ?] went. I reluctantly went back to my cell and silently burst into tears, as if I’d lost [ ? ? ? ? ?]
and not somebody whose job was to hurt me and extract information in a
the-end-justifies-the-means-way. I both hated and felt sorry for myself
for what happened to me.

“May I see my interrogator please?” I asked the guards, hoping that they could catch him before he reached the main gate.

“We’ll try,” said [ ? ? ? ? ?].

I retreated back in my cell, but soon [ ? ? ? ? ?] showed up at the door of my cell. “That is not fair, you know that I suffered torture and am not ready for another round.”

“You haven’t been tortured. You must trust my government. As long as
you’re telling the truth, nothing bad is gonna happen to you!” Of course
[ ? ? ? ? ?] meant The Truth as it’s officially defined; I didn’t want to argue with [ ? ? ? ? ?] about anything.

“I just don’t want to start everything over with new interrogators,” I said.

“I said what I had to say. Have a good trip. May Allah guide you. I’ll be just fine.”

“I am sure you will. It will take at most a week and you’ll forget
me.” I didn’t speak after that, instead I went back and laid myself
down. [ ? ? ? ? ?] stayed a couple of minutes, repeating, “I am not leaving until you assure me everything is all right.”

“I heard yesterday’s goodbye was very emotional. I never thought of you this way,” [ ? ? ? ? ?] said the next day. “Would you describe yourself as a criminal?”

I prudently answered, “To an extent.” I didn’t want to fall in any
possible trap, even though I felt that he honestly and innocently asked
the question when he realized that his evil theories about me were null.

“All the evil questions are gone,” [ ? ? ? ? ?] said.

“I won’t miss them,” I said.

Today [ ? ? ? ? ?] had
come to give me a haircut. It was about time! One of the measures of my
punishment was to deprive me from any hygienic shaves, teeth brushing,
or haircut. Today was a big day; they brought a masked barber. Though
scary looking, he did the job.

*

Although the rest of the world didn’t have a clue where the U.S.
government was incarcerating me, I knew since Day 1 where I was, thanks
to God and the clumsiness of the [ ? ? ? ? ?]. During my incarceration in the secret place, from August 2003 to August 2004, [ ? ? ? ? ?] let slip some words giving away the location. “When I was in [ ? ? ? ? ?],” I said.

“Over there?” he said, gesturing with his fingers in the direction of [ ? ? ? ? ?]. He rapidly took his hand back and continued his conversation, but it was too late to take it back. Another time during [ ? ? ? ? ?]'s
visit, he said, “Here in GTMO … uh, I mean in the Caribbean …” When
everybody gave him a startled look, he tried to repair the irreparable.

“You know you are in one of the Caribbean islands?”

“Really?”

“Yes, you are.” I always acted as if I hadn’t known any clues about
my whereabouts. Guards had been trying to figure out my knowledge about
the place, and repeatedly commented that I was “in the middle of
nowhere.” But I always responded, “All I know, I am being detained by
the DoD and the place doesn’t matter, does it?”

[Finally] [ ? ? ? ? ?]
came to me, “I have to inform you, against the will of many members in
our team, that you are in GTMO. You’ve been honest with us and we owe
you the same.” I acted as if this was new information. But I was, at the
same time, happy because it meant many things to me, to be told where I
am. At the time of writing these lines I am sitting in the same cell,
but I don’t have to act ignorantly about where I am, and that is a good
thing.

Shortly after that the International Committee of the Red Cross was
allowed to visit after a long fight with the government. It was very odd
to the ICRC that I had all of a sudden disappeared from the camp as if
the earth had swallowed me. All attempts of the ICRC to see me or just
to know where I was were thoroughly flushed down the tube. The ICRC has
no real pressure on the U.S. government; ICRC tries, but the U.S.
government doesn’t change its path, even an inch. If they let the ICRC
see a detainee, that means the operation against that detainee is over.

Nevertheless, I was happy when I saw [ ? ? ? ? ?]
and his colleagues in around September 2004, and so were they. The ICRC
was very worried about my situation. They couldn’t come to me when I
needed them the most, but I cannot blame them, they certainly tried. [ ? ? ? ? ?] categorically refused to give the ICRC access to me.

[ ? ? ? ? ?] tried to
get me talking about the time they couldn’t have access to me. “We have
an idea because we talked to other detainees who were subject to abuse,
but we need you to talk, so we can help stop further acts of abuse. We
cannot act if you don’t tell us what happened to you.”

“I am sorry! I am only interested in sending and receiving mail, and am grateful that you’re helping me in doing so.” [ ? ? ? ? ?] brought a very high level ICRC [ ? ? ? ? ?] from Switzerland, who had been working on my case. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
tried to get me talking, but to no avail. “We understand your worries.
All we’re worried about is your well-being, and respect your decision.”

We detainees know that meetings with the ICRC are monitored. Some
detainees were confronted with statements they made to the ICRC and
there was no way for the [ ? ? ? ? ?]
to know them unless the meetings were monitored. Many detainees refused
after that to talk to the ICRC and suspected them to be interrogators
disguised in ICRC clothes. I know some interrogators who presented
themselves as private journalists. But to me that was very naive; for a
detainee to believe such a thing and mistake a journalist for an
interrogator, he must be an idiot, and there are better methods to get
an idiot talking. Such mischievous practices led to tensions between
detainees and the ICRC. ICRC people were cursed and spit on.

However, in the summer of 2005, I voluntarily confessed to [ ? ? ? ? ?] a bland rendition of the abuse I had been subject to. [ ? ? ? ? ?] asked whether or not he should share the information with the [ ? ? ? ? ?] and I answered positively.

“I was afraid of telling you the story because of possible retaliation. But since [ ? ? ? ? ?] was here the other day virtually threatening me; I don’t seem to have anything to lose.”

The ICRC was not the first to learn of Slahi’s ordeal. In late
2003, the Marine lawyer assigned to prosecute Slahi before the military
commissions started to wonder why the prisoner had suddenly become so
“prolific.” Working with an investigator from the U.S. Navy’s Criminal
Investigation Task Force, Lt. Col. Stuart Couch pieced together the
circumstances of Slahi’s interrogation and concluded that he had been
tortured. Couch then refused to prosecute Slahi’s case, citing his
belief as an evangelical Christian in “the dignity of every human
being.” (See sidebar interview with Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor of the Guantánamo Military Commissions.)

By 2005, Slahi’s situation had changed completely. Since then, he has been granted unusual privileges, living, as the Washington Post reported in 2010, with one other detainee in a fenced-in compound where they are allowed to garden, write, and paint.

The guards wanted to be baptized with names of characters in the show Star Wars.

“From now on we are the [ ? ? ? ? ?] and that is what you call us. Your name is Pillow,” said [ ? ? ? ? ?]. I, later on, learned that [ ? ? ? ? ?]
are sort of Good Guys who fight against the Forces of Evil. For the
time being, I represented the Forces of Evil and the guards the Good
Guys.

[ ? ? ? ? ?] was in his early 40s, married with children, small but athletically built. He spent some time working in the [ ? ? ? ? ?], then [ ? ? ? ? ?] ended up doing a special mission for the [ ? ? ? ? ?]. “I’ve been working [ ? ? ? ? ?],” he told me.

“I got you,” I said. It sounds confusing or even contradictory but although [ ? ? ? ? ?] is a rough guy, he is humane. So to say, his bark is worse than his bite. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
understands what many guards don’t understand: If you talk and tell
your interrogators what they wanted to hear, you should be relieved. But
many of the other nitwits kept doubling pressure on me, just for the
sake of it.

“My job is to make you see the light,” said [ ? ? ? ? ?],
addressing me for the first time while watching me eat my meals. Guards
were not allowed to talk to me or each other. I couldn’t talk to them
either. I could say only, “Yes, sir, no sir, I need medics, I need
interrogators.” But [ ? ? ? ? ?]
is not a by-the-book guy; he thinks more than any other guard and his
goal is to make his country victorious. The means don’t matter.

“Yes, sir,” I answered, without even understanding what he meant. I
thought about the literal sense of the light I haven’t seen for a long
time, and believed he wanted to get me cooperating so I can see the
daylight. But [ ? ? ? ? ?] meant the figurative sense. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
always yelled at me and scared me, but he never hit me. He illegally
interrogated me several times, and that was why I called him [ ? ? ? ? ?]; [ ? ? ? ? ?]
wanted me to confess to many wild theories he heard the interrogators
talking about. Furthermore, he wanted to gather knowledge about
terrorism and extremism. I think his dream in life is to become an
interrogator. What a hell of a dream.

“You are my enemy,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“So let’s talk as enemy to enemy,” [ ? ? ? ? ?] said. He opened my cell and offered me a chair. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
did the talking for the most part. He was talking about how great the
U.S. is, and how powerful; America is this, America is that … We
Americans are so and so …” I was only wondering and shaking lightly. And
every once in a while I confirmed that I was paying attention, “Yes,
sir … Really … Oh, I didn’t know … You’re right … I know …”

During our conversations, he sneakily tried to make me admit to
things I haven’t really done. “What was your role in September 11?”

“I didn’t participate in September 11.”

“Bullshit!” he screamed madly. I realized it would be no good for my life to look innocent, at least for the time being.

Then I said, “I was working for AQ in Radio Telecom.”

He seemed to be happier with a lie. “What was your rank?” he dug.

“I would be a lieutenant.”

I both hated and liked when he was on duty. I hated him interrogating
me, but I liked him giving me more food and new uniforms. He started to
give me lessons and made me practice them the hard way. The lessons
were proverbs and made-up phrases he wanted me to memorize and practice
in my life. I still do remember the following lesson: “1) Think before
you act. 2) Do not mistake kindness for weakness … etc.” Whenever [ ? ? ? ? ?]
judged me to have broken one of the lessons, he took me out of my cell
and strewed all my belongings all over the place. After that, [ ? ? ? ? ?]
asked me to put everything back in no time. I always failed to organize
my stuff, but he only made me do it several times, after which I
miraculously put my stuff back in time.

My relationship with [ ? ? ? ? ?] developed positively with every day that went by, and henceforth with the rest of the guards because they regarded him highly.

“Fuck it! If I look at Pillow I don’t think he is a terrorist, I
think he is an old friend of mine, and enjoy playing games with him,” he
said to the other guards.

I felt somewhat relaxed and gained some self-confidence. Now, the
guards discovered in me the humorous guy and used their time with me for
entertainment. They started to make me repair their DVD players and
PCs; in return I was allowed to watch a movie. [ ? ? ? ? ?] didn’t exactly have the most recent PC model, and when [ ? ? ? ? ?] asked me whether I have seen [ ? ? ? ? ?] PC, I said, “You mean the museum piece that [ ? ? ? ? ?] has?” [ ? ? ? ? ?] laughed hard and said “[ ? ? ? ? ?] better not hear what you said.”

“Don’t tell him.”

We slowly but surely became a society and started to gossip about interrogators and call them names. In the mean time, [ ? ? ? ? ?]
taught me the rules of chess. Before the prison, I didn’t know the
difference between a pawn and the rear end of a knight, nor was I really
a big gamer. I find in chess a very interesting game, especially the
fact that a prisoner has total control over his pieces, giving him some
confidence back. When I started playing, I played very aggressively in
order to let out my frustration. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
was really not very good at playing chess, but he was my first mentor
and he beat me in my first game ever. But the next game was mine, and so
were all the following games.

Chess is a game of strategy, art, and mathematics. It takes deep
thinking, and there is no luck involved. You get rewarded or punished
for your actions, your moves. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
brought me a chessboard so I could play against myself. When the guards
noticed my chessboard, they wanted to play me. When they started to
play me, they always won. The strongest among the guards was [ ? ? ? ? ?]. He taught me how to control the center. Moreover, [ ? ? ? ? ?] brought me some literature, which helped decidedly in honing my skills. After that the guards had no chance to defeat me.

“That is not the way I taught you to play chess,” commented [ ? ? ? ? ?] angrily when I won the game.

“What should I do?”

“You should build a strategy, and organize your attack! That’s why the fucking Arabs never succeed.”

“Why don’t you just play the board?” I wondered.

“Chess is not just a game,” he said.

“Just imagine you’re playing against a computer!”

“Do I look like a computer to you?”

“No.”

The next game I tried to build the strategy in order to let [ ? ? ? ? ?] win.

“Now you understand how chess must be played,” he commented. I knew [ ? ? ? ? ?]
had issues dealing with defeat, thus I didn’t enjoy playing him because
I didn’t feel comfortable practicing my newly acquired knowledge. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
believes there are two kinds of people, white Americans and the rest of
the world. White Americans are smart and better than anybody. I always
tried to explain things to him by saying, for instance, “If I were you …
or … If you were me,” but he got angry and said, “Don’t you ever dare
compare me with you or compare any American with you.” I was shocked
then, but I did as he said. After all, I didn’t have to compare myself
with anybody. [ ? ? ? ? ?]
hates the rest of the world, especially the Arabs, Jews, French,
Cubans, and others. The only other country he mentioned positively was
England.

After one game of chess with him, he flipped the board.

“Fuck your nigger chess, this is Jewish chess!” he said.

“Do you have something against black people?” I asked.

“Nigger’s not black, nigger means stupid,” he argued.

We had discussions like that, but we had only one black guard who had no say, and when he worked with [ ? ? ? ? ?] they never interacted. [ ? ? ? ? ?] resented him. [ ? ? ? ? ?] has a very strong personality, dominant, authoritarian, patriarchal, and arrogant.

“My wife calls me Asshole,” he proudly told me.

I remember the first August day when [ ? ? ? ? ?] surged through smiling and greeted me, “Salamu alaikum!”

[ ? ? ? ? ?] and I started to talk as if we knew each other for years. [ ? ? ? ? ?] studied biology and joined [ ? ? ? ? ?]
recently as an enlisted person, most likely in order to pay her college
credit. Many Americans do. College education in the U.S. is sinfully
high.

“I am going to help you start your garden,” [ ? ? ? ? ?] said.

A long time ago, I asked the interrogators to get me some seeds in
order to be able to experiment around, and maybe succeed in growing
something in the aggressive soil of GTMO.

“I have problem with crickets that keep destroying my garden,” I complained.

“Take some soap and put it in water and keep spraying it lightly on the plants every day.” [ ? ? ? ? ?] suggested. And I blindly followed [ ? ? ? ? ?]
advice. However, I remarked that my plants were growing unhappy and
sort of sick. Thus I decided to spray only the half of the plants with
diluted soap and watch the results. It didn’t take long to see the soap
was responsible for the bad effects. So I stopped completely. After that
I kept telling [ ? ? ? ? ?]: “I know what you studied! You studied how to kill plants with diluted soap!”

“Shut up! You just didn’t do it right.”

“Whatever.”

[ ? ? ? ? ?] treated me as if I were [ ? ? ? ? ?] brother, and I did as if [ ? ? ? ? ?]
were my sister. Of course, some might say that all that interrogator’s
stuff is a trick to lure detainees to provide them information. So they
can be friendly, sociable, humane, generous, sensitive, but still they
are evil and ungenuine about everything. I mean, there is a good reason
to doubt the integrity of interrogators, if only due to the nature of
the interrogator’s job. The ultimate goal of an interrogator is to get
intel from his target, the nastier the better. However, interrogators
are human beings with feelings and emotions. There are all kinds of
interrogators, good, bad, and in-between.

Besides, here in GTMO Bay everything is different.

*

It’s very funny how false the picture is that Western people have of
Arabs: savage, violent, insensitive, and cold-hearted. And I can say
with confidence that Arabs are peaceful, sensitive, civilized, and big
lovers, among other qualities. [I told] [ ? ? ? ? ?],
“You guys claim that we are violent, but if you listen to Arabic music
or read Arabic poetry, it is all about love. On the other hand, American
music is about violence and hatred, for the most part.” During my time
with [ ? ? ? ? ?] many poems went across the table; I haven’t kept any copies, [ ? ? ? ? ?] has all the poems. [ ? ? ? ? ?] also gave me [ ? ? ? ? ?] small Diwan. [ ? ? ? ? ?] is very surrealistic, and I am terrible when it comes to surrealism. I hardly understood anything in her Diwan.